Tammy Abraham could have taken a different path in January, but instead, he opted on staying at Aston Villa, as he is now proving his worth at his parent club, Chelsea.
Eight months ago, when Chelsea striker Tammy Abraham was in the Championship, he had a big decision to make in either staying at his loan club Aston Villa for the rest of the season or making a switch to interested parties in the Premier League.
At the time, Abraham was running riot in England’s second-tier, but Villa were struggling to prove their worth as promotion to the Premier League was slipping away from them day by day.
Abraham’s form had alerted Villa’s promotion rivals Wolves, who were keen to add more bite to their squad, as reported by BBC Sport.
In the end, Abraham ended up staying at Villa Park and helping the club earn promotion – fast forward to today, and he recently started his first Champions League game for Chelsea, and ironically, at the weekend, he put Wolves to the sword by netting a stunning hat-trick against Nuno Espirito Santo’s side.
When Villa did get promoted, Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish shared that he was the one who persuaded Abraham to stay by lying to the player on when he was going to return from his three-month lay-off.
“I always said it to Tammy [that Villa could get promoted despite being 12 points off the play-off places in March],” Grealish told AVTV. “He was close to leaving in January and he kept on saying ‘when are you going to come back?’
“I had to keep on lying to Tammy telling him ‘I’ll be back at the end of January’. But really in my head, I knew I wasn’t going to be back until March. And he ended up staying.”
At the time of Wolves’ interest in Abraham, Villa were without their star man [Grealish], and they were dropping more and more points. Promotion was looking well off.
If Abraham had decided to leave in January then it has to be questioned whether he would be in the position he is in today because that ‘lie’ by Grealish ended up proving to be the best lie he ever told.
When Grealish did return to action in March, Villa went on a 10-game winning run, clawed back a 15-point gap between themselves and the play-offs, with the rest being history.
That historical winning run, that play-off semi-final win against West Brom and then the final win against Derby County, has all proven to be helpful for Abraham, who now sits as the Premier League’s top marksman after five league matches.
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